Archive for October, 2009

The game has undergone a name change from simply Monkey
to the subtler Enslaved.

No QTE’s (Quicktime events) are in the game.

It will be longer than Heavenly Sword.

A: Antoniades let slip that Monkey’s cloud will pop up later in the game, apparently taking the guise of a hoverboard that will utterly change the way you navigate open areas like this.

B: Settings are stunningly detailed, nature’s return and the derelict past left behind by a near fallen humanity made eerily beautiful by an incredibly talented art team.

C: The largest remnants of the mechanised war make up the Titan Graveyard, a desert-like expanse filled with gigantic corroding machines that still twitch with signs of activity.

D: The staff is a versatile weapon indeed, allowing for both close and ranged combat thanks to it’s blast option and variety of ammo types. We look forward to seeing how far it’s ability to grow to obscene lengths is taken.

E: As with Resident Evil 5’s Assist Jumps, Monkey can toss Trip to distant ledges to have her do her thing on the far side, such as dropping a ladder to help you progress.

F: Get too caught up in the action and it can be all too easy to forget about Trip. When she’s in trouble, you really need to drop everything.

Story

Nina Kristensen: “There’s actually always been a secret love of Monkey within the studio, even in Kung Fu Chaos”

Tameem Antoniades: “Once we had the idea of this dual-character game, wrapping it up in an interesting story proved difficult. I read Monkey years ago, but we didn’t want to do another Asian-themed game after Heavenly Sword”, Antoniades recalls. “We just kinda thought, what if it was robots instead of demons? Technology instead of magic? Maybe we could use the kernel of Journey To The West and adapt it in some unexpected way. So it all came about from that, really.”

” It’s going to be a challenge all the way through development,” Antoniades confirms. “The fact is, Trip shouldn’t do anything stupid while you’re playing the game and if she does get into trouble, it’ll be your fault – you’ve not done something, you’ve not put her somewhere safe or you’ve not protected her correctly.” He then goes on to detail her one-shot failsafe. “She also has a last-chance mechanism. If she’s being attacked by a robot, it will pick her up and grab her. Then, just before it would kill her, the camera will swoop in to show you that in slow motion and she’ll do an EMP blast. This stuns all the enemies around her for a few seconds, so you’ve got that time to get back to her and save her.
But if you fail to do that, you’re toast. As long as you’re always aware that you have to protect Trip and as long as it’s always fair,I think it’s a valid mechanic.”

Combat

“The combat in Enslaved isn’t about having lots and lots of combos- it’s more about technique. Countering, evading, attacking, multiple enemy moves…it’s about choosing when to apply those techniques,” Antoniades informs us. “The combat is hard, too. If there are three or four guys around you that you’re fighting, you’re pretty likely to lose most of your health, if not die. We want it to be a brutally hard combat system and the reason for that is that we want the player to think about other ways of approaching situations. You can go in and try to fight them hand to hand, but surely it’s better to rip off a machine gun and shoot a couple of guys with it first?”

A: Rather than simply being able to make the headband contract to cause Monkey pain, Trip can also issue him with commands. It helps keep him on task early on.

B: Monkey has a recharging shield, which also covers Trip while he is carrying her. Health, however, is another matter entirely and when that gets low, you have to call upon her to use health packs on your behalf.

C: Taking down bigger mechs in close quarters combat is no mean feat, but your reward is one of several impressive sequences that show Monkey beating the bolts out of them before finishing them off.

While we haven’t been able to play the game ourselves, we have heard some interesting things from our compatriots at gamesTM. They pointed out things like a menu enabling you to issue simple commands to the AI-controlled Trip, meaning it will hopefully avoid those unnecessary pad-throwing incidents due to massive idiocy on the computer’s part, as well as how puzzles in the game can be approached from numerous angles (figuratively and literally, of course). We’ve also been told to expect some pretty brutal combat, with scouting – using a robotic dragonfly, naturally – helping to reveal weak spots and the like in enemies. Example: some robots have weak gun joints, so why not rip their arms off and use their own weapons against them?